


find my soul as i go home

by meanderingsoul



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath, Episode Tag, F/M, Family Feels, Friendship/Love, Gen, Gentleness, Late Night Conversations, No Epilogue, Post-Season/Series 07 Finale, Relief, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26099716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: He’d never really been a techy, but Phil had done much more on the computers side of things as an agent in the 90s. Then the tech had started to change so fast and he’d been so much more in the field commander role that it seemed like he’d gone from knowing it to just kind of using it in about a year.Now apparently, he was somehow getting used to being it. He hadn’t anticipated that change either.
Relationships: Phil Coulson & Melinda May, Phil Coulson/Melinda May
Comments: 20
Kudos: 57





	find my soul as i go home

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set after the events of the series finale, but later that same night with no mention of the One Year Later epilogue. Title is from Temptation by New Order.

This almost felt like a normal late night, a dusty desk and a project and people shuffling around in other parts of the base. It wasn’t the base his memories still wanted to tell him was home, but it was Shield’s home now and a keyboard was a keyboard anyway.

He’d never really been a techy, but Phil had done much more on the computers side of things as an agent in the 90s. Then the tech had started to change so fast and he’d been so much more in the field commander role that it seemed like he’d gone from knowing it to just kind of using it in about a year.

Now apparently, he was somehow getting used to _being_ it. He hadn’t anticipated that change either.

At least the quiet thump of May’s heavy boots on the floor was still a familiar sound. Phil didn’t look up from typing when he asked, “Do you remember when work involved floppy discs?”

May’s scoff was still familiar too. She remembered, and he could tell she heard and agreed with the rest of what he hadn’t actually said. If it seemed real how much had changed around them, if she could believe how long they’d been doing this.

It was quiet in here with only a few of the computers on, just the air circulating and his steady typing. It stayed steady as long as he didn’t think too hard about it.

“Daisy’s asleep in her bunk,” May said quietly. “Flint’s in the healing pod now, too interested to nap though.”

“Elena still hovering?” Phil asked even though he knew the answer. The first thing out of Flint’s mouth when the Zephyr landed had been _Yoyo!_ and she and Mack had made a not-remotely-subtle beeline to the kid.

“ _Oh_ yeah,” May said with a grin. “Cute kid. I barely met him before.”

“Obviously they hit it off. I have the least ah, information to go with when we were in the future.” Phil had a useable summary, but not the images and video like so much of the rest. It made a big difference in how _real_ it felt to him. That particular dystopian future felt more like a story.

“Makes sense,” she said, watching the code on the big screen from near his left side. “Do either of us know what you're doing?”

“Nope, but Daisy watched over my shoulder for a while and whatever she saw, she said it should hold up for a couple days at least. Days is worth the time. We need to make sure our new guests understand where they’re welcome in the systems sooner rather than later.”

Daisy had sat in a chair next to him for a while, wrapped in a purple blanket with stars and still with bloodshot eyes. Sometimes she made raspy _hmm_ sounds when he’d apparently typed something interesting. He _understood_ the codes more than he could read it. It was a whole new set of instincts. The know-how was there waiting, but Phil never would have thought to try on his own. May had cut straight to the core of things like she always did.

“Mack’s talking to a few of them now.”

“Fitzsimmons?” he asked, the same way he’d asked her for a quick update on their team for years. Maybe he shouldn’t ask that way anymore? He wasn’t in charge of anything, wasn’t technically even an agent right now.

But May answered with just enough detail like she always did. “They're still talking to Piper, but it’s calmed down. Alya got fussy.”

“You have to give her back?” Phil teased.

Watching May earlier nodding along seriously with whatever Alya had been telling her about, the little girl balanced on her hip like she’d done it a thousand times, had been like getting kicked in the chest but in a good way. He hadn’t been the only one staring.

“Fitz has her asleep on his shoulder,” she said, the awe clear in her voice.

“It's pretty amazing, huh.” Yesterday they’d been in another timeline with no idea where Fitz was. Yesterday they’d been losing everything. This morning he’d felt Daisy not-breathing under his hands. But everything turned and turned and everyone was home in the base. He’d died a year ago but today he got to introduce himself to Fitzsimmons’ daughter.

It was amazing they’d made it home at all.

“Yeah,” May whispered, and swallowed hard. “She sounds like Simmons, looks like Fitz at that age.”

“Oh, really?” He’d never seen pictures of Fitz that young anywhere, not in his old Shield files or even on someone’s phone, but Alya did sound like Simmons. There was an excited chirp in her voice sometimes. It reminded him of Simmons’ voice whenever there’d been something gross in the lab back on the Bus.

“He showed me a picture once. Years ago, at the Playground,” May said with a soft half smile.

Phil smiled. Fitz had gotten nervous around May so easily at first. It was obviously a conversation she cherished. That jet and that old brick base, Fitzsimmons and Daisy when May still called them kids when they weren’t in the room.

It was a lifetime ago now, in so many ways.

May hopped up to sit on a nearby desk, let her right foot swing. He hadn't seen that in a while.

“You ok?” he finally asked. She was hovering but... not. Phil would usually have a better guess what she wanted, to vent or to get him to cook something, or stop what he was working on to do something else because she was bored.

Maybe...maybe she just wanted his company. He wouldn’t have questioned that before.

“It’s been a loud couple of days. For me,” she said, staring somewhere past her boots.

Oh. The incomprehensible amount of death in that other timeline and the Chronicoms so soon after... “You should get some sleep.”

That idea barely got a shrug. “Can't yet.”

May almost always knew when she could sleep or not so he didn’t push her. It was a separate issue from the fact that she never gave herself enough time to rest. He was trying to remember if she’d eaten with Daisy earlier, was thinking about nudging her in the general direction of making some tea when she spoke again.

“It's still quiet around you.”

Phil glanced at her before he could tell what kind of look was on his face.

She grimaced a little bit so it must have showed a bit more than he’d meant to. “I didn't mean...not how I said it before.”

Phil wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d been angry at the sight of him when he saw her again on the Zephyr, not knowing everything that had happened and what he was. He’d been bracing himself for anger or upset, but the blank indifference had been so much worse. It did help knowing that she probably wouldn’t have said _simulated_ like that, maybe wouldn’t have dropped his hand like a tool she was done with if she’d had her own feelings at the time. It...really helped.

He stopped working, leaned against the table next to her. “I don't think your abilities work that way on me. On people like me,” he said quietly.

The Chronicoms could think in a new way because of her, but she still couldn’t feel them in the base. Even when the range had changed on her powers, even when her own feelings had slipped back into place she couldn’t feel him. He was something else. No matter where anything went from here, they weren’t the same kind of being anymore. But they’d used to be.

“I’ve tried.”

“I know. It’s ok.”

Phil noticed her knuckles were bruised again. Her hand was curled around the table edge, inches away from him. At some point he’d been allowed to hold her hands. But that was then. Phil kept his hands still.

“When I was trying to force the Chronicoms to understand...it wasn’t just one-way, even though I was loud. I could feel them thinking.”

“What was it like?”

“Different. Flat and sharp and fast. It made Enoch make more and less sense somehow,” she finished wryly.

Phil smiled but it was tight. Sitting with someone that old who’d seen that much and at the end has so many of the same fears and worries...

He’d be thinking about that a long time.

“But. It made it obvious just how much...you still think like you,” she said and finally turned to meet his eyes, something aching but calm in hers.

“Oh.”

Phil had watched her lock her knees not to fall after the light, the connection or uplink or whatever it was called, faded. She’d lurched backwards and his hand went up to brace her shoulders on instinct. She’d been too-warm and shivering, just like after a tough fight. Fitz had told her it would work so she did it but that didn’t mean it wasn’t hard.

He’d wanted to rub his palm along her back but he wasn’t sure it would be welcome and there hadn’t been time. He hadn’t thought to ask her how it felt. She’d stared at him a moment when she finally opened her eyes, had stared at him after they’d fought together too, like she was seeing something new.

“May...” he started, but Phil didn’t miss the scrunch as she tried and failed to fight a yawn. It made him smile. “Sure you can’t sleep yet?”

He got a half-hearted glare before she said, “Fine.”

She slid down from the table and landed with a barely-audible thud. Phil moved to turn back to the screens. He didn’t desperately need sleep like she still did.

“Hey.”

May reached for him, but it wasn’t the reach of her arms up over his shoulders that he was more used to, pulling him down to her strong shoulders or letting him sway her on her toes.

She wrapped both arms snug around his waist and set her cheek against his chest.

Phil was pretty sure he made some awful, small sound. It was a moment before he could so, so carefully wrap an arm around her shoulders.

“Don't read into this,” she grumbled against his shirt.

His smile trembled, laughter or tears, but it was fine; her eyes were closed. “Right, like we’ve never hugged before. Not once. How will I cope,” he teased, smoothed her hair back from her face before he could overthink it.

She was so warm in his arms. Phil had kind of forgotten. There were so many empty weeks in his head, more than a year without sensation at all. A year without seeing her or hearing her voice and Phil was pretty sure he hadn’t had to do that since they’d _met_.

He wanted to clutch at her, shove his face down into her hair and breathe her in and _whine_ like he was still an animal like she was. He wasn’t. But this was still so good, still made something quiet down in his head. Phil could feel the bone at her temple pressing to his skin, the tiny bump of the shell of her ear.

“You whirr a little bit. Like a box fan,” she mumbled.

“Wow, thanks,” he said, but the comment didn’t sting. They were past tripping over the new details now.

But Phil knew he didn't have a heartbeat under her ear anymore. He could breathe and he did from habit, but if he wasn’t talking he didn’t need to. His body sounded different, and while it wasn’t upsetting her so far, it probably wasn’t very comforting.

He started humming quietly. It wasn't really a _nice_ sound, he wasn’t much of a singer, but it was still air through his chest. It still thrummed a bit. It was familiar.

May made same disgusted little sound she’d always made, but her weight stayed leaned heavily into him, shoulders relaxed under his arm.

Phil swayed them foot to foot slowly. This was the most at-home with anything he’d felt since he’d opened these eyes. 


End file.
